


Mission Set: Priority Alpha

by Mx_Maxie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cunnilingus, Cyberpunk, Dom/sub, F/M, Femdom, Robot Sex, Service Kink, Service Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:41:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25892272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mx_Maxie/pseuds/Mx_Maxie
Summary: The XZ model is coded for war. For blood and fire and rage. Give it a mission and it will succeed, no matter the cost. This one though, this one never sees the front line, she snatches it before it can. Steals it away, makes it hers, and becomes the only mission it will ever have.
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71





	Mission Set: Priority Alpha

She buys it in a private auction.

She buys it in the chaotic, whirlwind days after Romulus Aldridge leaves the company he built from the ground up...for no reason. No one knows why Romulus leaves. Why he takes ten percent stock, his favourite prototype model, and just...disappears.

How could he just leave? Why did he leave? He wouldn’t leave for no reason, what the fuck’s going on at Synthetech? What about the models he was working on? Is the new line delayed?

Romulus leaves and takes the company’s reputation with him. Walks out the door and off to god fucking knows where. Impossible to reach, impossible to track, even though that should be impossible. He just goes and everything goes into freefall, and she’s one of the idiots left bracing for the sick crash.

Company stocks plunge into the negatives during that first week, and she exists on caffeine shots and less than legal stimulants. Just to get by, just to keep up. Half her floor quits, rats leaving the sinking ship, but she stays, because she’s chained to the mast.

So she’s there day and night, in front of her screen, sitting in on meetings and co-ordinating too small teams on too large projects. PR, PR, public fucking relations turns into a spin game. Lie about this, no comment that. Fuck up the algorithm, flood the hashtags and keep the accounts running.

Her assistant leaves, then the replacement, and the one after that, and somewhere around the sixth straight day, she forgets to get another one. She starts answering her own calls, and her supervisor’s, and some of the Board calls too. Because there’s nobody else.

She doesn’t know who the fuck Romulus is calling for that day. Eight after he disappeared off the face of the earth. Literally? She doesn’t know, she doesn’t care. He calls, and she answers, because she’s the only one available.

And she gets as far as “Hell—” before he cuts across sharp and commanding, as ever.

“We did good work on the XZ 9832 prototype, it’d be a shame to scrap it,” is what he says. Not hello, not who is this. Romulus fucking Aldridge himself tells her not to let the prototype XZ get scrapped and she stares at her screen for a full five seconds afterwards. Stares at her screen, and the clutter of notifications, stares at her reflection in it, and how tired she looks.

Eyes drawn dark, mouth drawn tight and pinched. She looks pale, grey and jaundiced under skin that should never look pale. She’s exhausted, fucking exhausted, with a brain that’s moving too slow, but fuck. Fuck.

Delia takes a shuddering-shaking breath and thinks. What does she know about the XZ? Nothing. It was a personal project, military contracted, something that’d make the company another cool trillion in the second quarter. Aldridge had a hand in it, might’ve even coded the fucking thing himself, like he hadn’t done since he’d left R&D. The last (official) Aldridge model had been the SR, and he’d taken the SV upgrade with him.

So, what does Delia know about the XZ? Nothing. What will she do? Something stupid. Something fucking idiotic.

Because why? Because she could remember that very first interview with Romulus, before Synthetech had hit it big with their first line of LS models. She’d been hired on in the nebulous time just before that, when Romulus was on the radar but he wasn’t blowing it all out of the water.

She’d met him, that enigmatic him, and he’d offered her a position here. Somewhere where she’d know things, somewhere where she’d see it all unfold. Maybe not be safe, but she’d be able to keep her head down. Did she want to change the world? Fuck no she’d said. Good, he’d said, because I will and you’ll get to write it for the history books.

Arrogant prick, he was an arrogant prick then and he’s an arrogant prick now. But…but Delia’s still slipping into the secure files. The ones that would send security alerts to the cybersec team and have building guard on her ass in 4.5 seconds. Any other time that is. Any other time, she’d be face down and bleeding. Maybe she’d have a bullet between her eyes, maybe she’d get dragged in for interrogation, hooked up to a electroshock and zapped till she sang.

Any other time, but not now. Nobody’s keeping track of inside searches right now, they can barely handle outside hacks. So for an hour, Delia forgets about everything else, all the meetings and mitigation and tired-tired-tired in her bones, and just reads.

Then, when those sixty minutes are up, and her eyes are burning and her throat is tight, she cold closes her terminal. She cold closes the entire floor, because she’s one of three people left on it, and the other two aren’t on site. Delia shuts down and does a soft boot wipe on every fucking access terminal on the floor and heads straight for an off site server. Because Romulus Aldridge was the same arrogant jackass she remembered, and he was right.

It would be a shame to scrap the XZ.

In the second week after the founder’s disappearance, Synthetech is still in the shit, but the Board is clawing them back out. Inch by scavenging inch, because they’re tied in, they’re fucking cemented into the foundations like Romulus apparently wasn’t. They don’t have a choice, if they want to avoid a complete blackout on their funds, legal and otherwise, they need to bring the company back.

So they do. The Board calls in every favour they can, makes the threats they need to, contacts the people they’d rather not but what god damn choice do they have? And, somewhere in between all that, Romulus’ more…personal models go to private auction.

Auctions set up in the slums, auctions run out of lush penthouses, auctions based in club backrooms all across the city, and Delia gets an alert for every single one. Not as herself, of course not, but she gets the alert anyway. There are hundreds of the damn things, running for minutes at a time, running off Ai held servers.

She sneaks into each of them, every single one of the hundreds, and snoops around looking for what she wants. There’s so fucking much though, so much stolen tech, so much next-next gen shit, and straight up illegal mech-augments that would keep anything alive. And they all get bought. For millions and billions. They get bought so easy. Numbers flying, numbers racking up, running up and being sold in seconds.

Delia isn’t a blackmarket, backdoor hack, but she does have access to shadow accounts that she shouldn’t and she has favours that aren’t hers to use. So, when she finally finds what she’s looking for, in the middle of the day and another press conference, she politely excuses herself and sprints for the second closest service station. The bidding is already half a trillion when she muscles in, but she locks the bidding brute force before it can climb any higher.

Back to a grimy wall, Delia registers her bid then crashes the server. Nerves tingling in her finger tips, she makes a bid two mill higher, and takes down thirty other auctions with hers.

Then she waits. One second. Two seconds. Tab clutched tight in fingers going cold. Three seconds. Four seconds.

[Congratulations! You win! Please contact Sub-Basement 294232SPW for your XZ 9832]

Blinks on her screen. Registered to a person that doesn’t exist, to be delivered to a place she’s never been to and will never visit again. Delia stares at the confirmation and…and wonders what the god damn fuck she just got herself into. But no, too late, she already locked herself into this too.

So, she straightens her tie, smooths her shirt, and crashes three service stations on the way back. She’s no backdoor hack but she knows how to cover a track and it’s so much harder to pinpoint anything when everything’s crashing. The rest of the press conference goes the same as all the rest, Board members reassuring a distrustful public and suspicious government of their capabilities. They can run this company without Aldridge, in fact, they’ve already tapped his estranged brother as a successor to the position.

And on and on and on they go, circling their solid talking points like the desperate corbeaux they are. Delia lets it happen, doesn’t remind them of the other talking points they have now, or the next interview they have scheduled, or the one after that. She lets it happen for one solid afternoon while she thinks about what the fuck she did.

She doesn’t even know why she did it. She doesn’t want to change the world, she’s not one of those anarchist hackerjacks looking to take down the grid and kill off debt. She’s not even eco-savvy, why the fuck would she be? The terraformers could take care of the pollution output and resource management was the best it’d been in decades, the world didn’t need her help. But here she was taking an illegal, highly dangerous, third-gen synth off the black market.

She doesn’t think about it, and she does, until it’s three days later and time for her to pick up her god damn war machine. Wearing the very specific outfit she’d outlined to the warehouse, knowing exactly where she would dump it after. Carrying the fake specs and real DNA lock, for the synth to sync with and really be hers. Because everything else could be fake, had to be, but this thing was gonna be hers and a DNA imprint was the only way to make that happen.

Even if this line wasn’t designed for single use operators, even if this line wasn’t designed for single use activation, Delia didn’t care. Romulus’ weapon would be hers, because he hadn’t cared who took it so long as they were Synthetech staff. Maybe he’d come by later looking for the thing, maybe he’d activate a homing protocol and try to take it back. She didn’t know, didn’t really care, she’d figure out how to block any of that shit.

“Sign in,” the warehouse bot tells her, pointing at the fifteen different places on the digital contract, and her signature is flawless at each one. Only slight variations, organic enough to fool the sensors and satisfy the bot.

“Follow me to your purchase.” And she does, following after this barebones thing, a skeleton of an operating system and the most basic Ai still on market. Delia sneers at its back, cheap-low tech, it might not have even clocked a copied signature if she’d used one.

But, she’s being safe. As safe as she can be with something like this, and when it finally stops, deep-deep into the bowels of storage and cargo, she almost doesn’t believe it. They’re ten sub-levels deep and five blocks in and there’s dust and rust and a rat snarling by, and nothing like the sleek-chic tech-labs Romulus made a habit of having. This is as far from that as physically possible and she’s here for one of his best pieces, one of his best.

He must’ve been fucking desperate when he cut and run. Must’ve been planning the runaway for months, years? Long enough to squirrel away his favourite toys in dirty little holes.

“Can I have some privacy for activation?” she asks, not meeting the bot’s pitted faceplate. Keeping her head down, even with the low-frequency scrambler running. She’ll have to deactivate it soon and she’s being careful.

“Of course. Please call if you require assistance,” then off it goes, creaking back down the rows and off to the front desk again. She doubts anyone else called for it but that’s where it’ll go because it doesn’t have a complex enough processor to do anything else.

She still waits a full five minutes before she deactivates the scrambler and climbs into the holding container…box, it’s a box. A metal box barely wide enough for two people—it isn’t wide enough for two. Delia has to squeeze in next to the plastic covered synth, reaching blind for the port behind the neck that would initiate first time boot up and take her to registration.

She has to wiggle and stretch and get creative with how she braces herself to get those few extra inches. Just enough to barely-barely reach the port, and her fingers slide past three times before she even finds the right side of it to smack. Once smacked though, the operating system activates and the synth flashes red-blue-red-neutral white.

“Activation code required,” comes across in a neutral computer tone, no inflection, no human veneer. Even the warehouse junk bot sounded vaguely person like. Hopefully it would get better after full activation. Something she has to struggle back out for.

From half-wedged behind the thing to back in front just to get enough space to read the registration number off the scrap paper. Paper, because she didn’t trust digital copies. At least the synth brings its own light, or its clothes does at least, and she only messes up the obscenely long string of numbers once, getting it perfect on the second try.

“Initialising. Please wait,” in the same neutral tone while she rolls back a sleeve and picks out a prick. The plastic’s still crinkle fresh when she rips it open, so at least that down-out drugstore was selling something from this decade.

According to the file, initialisation should take two minutes then it would run through user registration and set up. She’d need to provide another access code, or, and this was highly not recommended, she could provide a DNA sample for single user operation. Not the intended use and whatever happened after that would be her fucking problem, do not contact Synthetech about it.

Well no problem there, because it wasn’t like she’d bought the thing clean off a showroom floor. She was in a slum-house, ten levels deep and five into the shit. There was no one around to help if the thing self-destructed or went rogue or saw her as a threat and nixed her immediately.

Delia sighs, and sticks a vein with a hiss. Lips curling into something ugly as she draws up twice the safety limit for something like this. But, it wasn’t like she was a blood donor or anything, not like she could even sell the shit. Too much fuzz in her red for that, even three generations down, but maybe that’d make this easier.

“Initialisation complete, please provide squad registration code or DNA sample,” the synth says and Delia just tears away the plastic wrap. Tears at the corners, yanks in a rip, gets enough of it off to find a gloved hand and press the blood into it.

“Single operator registration chosen. DNA sample provided. Start registration.”

The last word’s barely said before the thing’s crushing the vial in its gloved fist, cracking the glass, spilling the blood. She watches, disgusted as it lifts the free hand to rip away the plastic over its face, and…

“Oh fucking,” she gags, and turns away, watches the damn wall instead. Because Romulus’ fancy third-gen synth is licking her blood. Lapping up all the shit stuck to its palm and eugh, disgusting.

She listens to it slurp the blood, all wet lapping like a dog, and crunch the glass, like chips, and grits her teeth. The noise is…makes her damn skin crawl, makes it worse when it’s the only sound in the whole place. Methodical lick-lick-lick and crunch-crackle-crunch.

“Operator Identified: Set to Priority Alpha. Please state legal name for operator purposes.”

She turns back to find the thing with its half-covered head cocked, only the lower half of the face visible. Notes the dark synth skin that looks perfect, in the low light at least, and the curve of the lips around the neutral voiced words. Not a bad mouth, perfectly white teeth with a hint of morph fang and full enough lips, but not artificially gorgeous.

“Operator: Delia Carol Rampersad,” she tells it, quieter, nearly a whisper, because this is the most dangerous part. Her name. Her real name. If anything heard it, if it got logged, then all the care and careful she’d been wouldn’t mean jack shit.

There’s a second, two, where she thinks the synth didn’t hear her, that she’ll have to say it again. And her heart’s jumping in her throat, and she has to force herself to breathe. Then something tears, loud and sharp in the quiet, and she startles bad enough to skitter back three steps. Out of the container and back into the narrow aisle.

She stares, eyes bug wide, as the synth rips itself out of the plastic. Methodical, from the head down, efficient in a minute. Until she’s looking at a…she’s looking at a synth that’s got…a synth that’s got a face. A human face, human features. Two brown eyes, a nose, black hair, skin. Skin everywhere.

Or well. Skin everywhere the tac-gear ain’t. Cuz the thing is dressed in tac, head to toe, military grade. But the face, that’s free to see, and it doesn’t have a scrap of plastic or a shred of plexi, no gears or wires showing. She can’t even fucking see any LEDs. Nothing, there’s nothing to show how not-human this thing is.

The fucking synth looks more human than some of the cys, most of the cys. And Delia blinks, she swallows, and sits down right there. Needs to sit, and doesn’t care about the dust or whatever the hell else might be on the floor. She just needs…a minute.

“Please provide personal designation,” the thing says, the thing that looks a god damn man. The only thing that’s not human is the voice, and she knows, she knows, that’ll get changed soon too. Will smooth out and take on the perfect pitch, tone, and inflection, until she won’t be able to tell.

It’s…he’s looking at her, head cocked, chin dipped. Brown eyes on her and expression neutral, waiting for a name. She has to name it.

She almost asks if she can come back to it, take a few days to get her head back together before she goes around naming the thing. But catches herself just before she says it. No, she can’t. Naming the XZ is part of the specific activation and registration process, if she doesn’t name it, then it won’t be hers and god fucking knows what would happen next.

Why hadn’t she picked out something before coming here? Why’d she think she’d know it when she saw it? Something to fit whatever face Romulus gave the thing, or however the voice sounded, or just—just something.

Looking at it now, Delia has no idea what to call the XZ and just grabs at the first thing to stumble across her reeling thoughts.

“Knox, designation: Knox, gender set male, mission parameters: personal assistant to Delia Rampersad,” she croaks, grasping at the tech talk. Desperate for that one piece of normal-stable as the synth calibrates itself. Face slack and emotionless as it blinks big brown eyes, and quirks its lips into something like a frown.

“Accepted.”

And it steps forward, too smooth and too human, out of the box and crouches in front of her. Smiling. Smiling.

“Hello Priority Alpha, I am your synth. My name is Knox,” is the very first thing her very own, Romulus Aldridge recommended synth says in a voice so much more human. Rich, with a depth and dip as it introduces itself, rich with emotion and feeling as it offers her a hand.

Its name was Knox and it was hers.

* * *

“I’m not designed for espionage,” it tells her as they leave the warehouse. After it’s wiped her entire transaction history, from walking in to walking back out.

All that careful and it didn’t even matter.

Though she jumps with every person they pass. Spine stiff, throat caught, as they duck pass puss houses and low line clubs full of people. Delia keeps waiting to get caught with her illegal synth. For someone to single them out, her with her head down, Knox with its tac gear.

There’s no reason to think they would, but her heart’s jumping-thumping-running away, and her blood’s up. Burning in her veins like her doc warned her about, three generations out and she still had to be careful with spilling her red. Or extracting it, or getting the teeniest, tiniest slice because the fuzz would start up again. Burn her some more.

They get home two hours after they should. Her too paranoid to take anything direct, too paranoid to let one detour suffice. Knox doesn’t complain, it can’t, but she’s not sure if that makes it better or worse.

But, at last, at least, they’re home and Delia can let herself relax. Just a little, barely a bit.

“I wasn’t meant to be a caretaker either,” it says after she ushers it past the threshold and snaps the maglocks shut.

It casts a critical eye on the dishes in her sink, so easy to see from the front door, and the dust on her shelves, in the living room she hasn’t been in for days. It looks around at her home with the kind of laser focused dedication that shouldn’t be human, shouldn’t even pass for it, but somehow does. Takes in the home that’s not really a home, just a place to eat, sleep, keep whatever she needs, before she’s out the door again and back to work.

Always back to work.

It wasn't a housekeeper, or a maid, but it smiles with something like warmth in its eyes and says, “but I am adaptable”. Then it’s shooing her into the bedroom, to get changed into something more comfortable than the stiff leather cover. She should say no to that. They have things to discuss, like how it’ll blend in as her assistant, and what kind of cover it’ll use, but its grip is too gentle to break and it walks her right to the door.

Waiting for her to open it and go in, waiting for her to pull out a drawer before it moves from the other side of that door.

And that’s when she should break. Should collapse on her bed and stare at the wall and wonder to herself what the fuck did she just do. How is she going to keep an illegal military synth, one designed for complete human assimilation, in her house? Why the fuck is she keeping it?

This is the part where she should grab something and break it. Her phone on the side table, the company tabs with their private company information. Maybe even the three back up needles she bought and didn’t toss. Smash them against the wall, grind them under her heel, break something and cut herself on the pieces. Bleed just to feel the burn.

Maybe she would later. After it had time to sink into her head just how very fucked she was. When she woke up in the morning and the synth was at the end of the bed, waiting for her.

“Fucking snyths.”

Delia doesn’t have the cathartic breakdown that she probably needs, instead she strips out of the leather cover and kicks it all under the bed. To deal with later. Then she drags herself to the shower and scrubs the entire first layer of skin away, reopening the needle site and smearing the washcloth pink, but she can’t find the time to give half a fuck.

Will it get infected? No probably not. Her blood was too hot for most everything, bacteria included. Wasn’t she just lucky.

By the time she’s sterile again, all evidence of the slum-house washed off and down the drain, she has the time to feel tired. And hungry. Shit. She hadn’t taken lunch today, or dinner, too busy with meeting minutes and then going to get the XZ afterwards.

She could order something but that was just too much work. Putting on her clothes was too much work, dragging herself back out into the main room was too much work—

“Dinner’s almost finished,” it tells her, throwing a smile over its shoulder while it tosses an egg in the air. She winces, ready for the splat, but no, the XZ catches the egg, and slides another pot onto the stove and where the hell did it get all this shit?

Delia doesn’t remember stocking food in her kitchen, can’t even remember the last time she had a grocery delivery made, but there it is. Her synth making enough food to feed half the complex with ingredients that actually look fresh.

“I have access to Synthetech’s entire database, and your accounts, I rush ordered a produce delivery,” Knox explains as it stirs and it flips and it cooks her something that smells better than anything she’s eaten in a month.

She should shout. Who the fuck told this thing it could use her money? How the hell did it have access to the database when it hadn’t been activated on site? What was it even making?

She should scream, Delia knows that’s the right response here, but she’s too tired for right, and too hungry. She ends up just perched on a chair at the counter, head resting on her arms as Knox moves through the kitchen like it’d been designed for just that. It was beautiful to watch, so precise and sure, but never uncanny valley perfect; Romulus had spent a lot of money on this one. And time.

Delia didn’t want to think about the complexity of Knox’s code, how much of it was Ai learning and how much of it was careful prediction coding. Just thinking about the work that went into Knox being able to crack an egg with one hand and flip vegetables with the other was giving her a headache. There were specialised chef models that didn’t have the dexterity this XZ was showing off ever so casually in her kitchen.

And all with a fucking smile, so soft and gentle, not an inch away from real.

Delia sat, and watched, half-drowsing away as Knox followed whatever recipes it’d downloaded, and she’s almost too tired to sit up when it’s done. Food plated out beautifully, utensils gleaming in the dull mood light.

What had it said? About not being a caretaker? Delia snorts as she swallows a forkful of stir-fry so nice she has to take a second to breathe. To just...breathe.

Not think about how many terrible instant meals she’s had at her desk. Not think about how long it’s been since she sat down in her own kitchen and ate something someone had made for her. Not think about the brown eyes watching her, cataloguing every micro-movement, and adjusting accordingly.

It’s not a caretaker but it’s already taking care of her.

Somehow she swallows, without choking, and gets her trembling hands under control enough to eat another bite, and another, and one more, until the plate’s empty and she doesn’t feel so shatter-shiver breakable.

“Did you enjoy the meal?” Knox asks when she’s done, asks quietly, with the kind of curiosity that doesn’t sound faked. Even if it probably is, it must be.

“Yes, thank you,” she croaks, because so what if the platitudes are fake? She’s got fucking manners, and when Knox grins at her, bright eyes squinting shut so happy. She thinks she’d do a lot more than just use her manners if it meant having that smile around, having it for hers even.

“That’s good to hear, I made you meals for the week so you wouldn’t have to bother,” it says, head tilted, expression open. Like it’s waiting for praise, like an adorable stray mutt putting on its best tricks for a couple scraps. Delia was always the one sneaking them more, a bite more, a swallow more, and getting told off for wasting her food.

Now though, now she’s alone and there’s no one to tell her what to do with her stray.

“That’ll save so much time, thank you Knox,” she murmurs, reaching across the narrow counter to pat its bare hand.

It shouldn’t surprise her that the synth’s warm, human warm, but it does. The feel of its skin, the detailing of fingerprints, even the stretch of tendons underneath. All of it surprises her, even though she’d read that report, even though she knew what Romulus was trying to do.

Having it here in front of her is nothing like reading a classified report. She can see the emotion programming in real time, the stretch of lips into a smile, the flare of nostrils with a simulated breath. She can judge the cognitive processing in the way it’s making decisions for itself, without user input or informance. She can even marvel at the wonder of technology under her fingers, in the simple feel of perfected synth skin.

And the fucking idiots were going to use this pretty thing for war.

“Will you clean up out here? I have some more reports to finish before I can sleep tonight,” she tells it, after she’s fed her stray and had her fun.

Back to work again, always back to work.

What does it do in the kitchen while she reads reports and sends off emails and work at shutting down the social media machine? Delia honestly has no clue. She’s too wrapped up in her work, hunched over the tablets and listening to the meetings she missed. Too caught up in the world that’s still crashing around her to even notice when it comes in the room.

Though, it’s whisper quiet, only making a sound when it’s already at her elbow. Clearing its throat and holding out a sleep shot that she waves away. She has too much work, still too much to do, even if she’s expected at the office in five hours. That’s five hours she’ll need to prepare for the latest shit storm brewing.

Delia half expects the thing to insist, like she’s heard single user bots do sometimes. Get so attached to their users that they start breaking protocol in the user’s health interest. They’d had synths returned for poor behaviour, locking their users’ devices and refusing to unlock until the user’d slept a full four hours.

Knox, blessedly, doesn’t try. Instead it sits on the bed with her, and says, “I’ve downloaded information patches on personal assistant duties, please allow me to help you.” Which...she shouldn’t. Because it might bog her down, because it didn’t know how she thought, but Delia hesitates just one second before shoving one of the tabs at it.

And it does stumble. For the first time, it stumbles. Needing her input and direction when it came to the unspoken rules of the field, why she’d done it this way instead of that. Why hadn’t the company filed cease and desists against this media house but had against this one?

Maybe it shouldn’t make her as relieved as she is that Romulus’ super synth could stumble, that there were still things computer learning couldn’t account for. But Delia was too tired to care about should and shouldn’t. Yes the XZ could cook and clean and hack and probably kill too, but it still needed human guidance to grasp fluid societal norms. How quaint.

Together they get through all of the reports in half the time, and that is impressive. Even with the questions it had to ask, and the explanations she had to give, they still finish before the first pink of dawn seeps past the blinds, and Delia accepts the sleep shot then. Diluted down to two hours of course, but it’s two hours more than she was expecting.

And it’s two hours more than she’s had all week. Enough energy to get her out the door, without a stimulant buzzing her brain, and to actually have eaten something. Of course it helped that her new assistant’d made her breakfast and had everything already set out when she shot out of bed a minute before the alarm.

Knox had packed her bag and set out her clothes (freshly pressed using the iron she’d never bothered unboxing) and been waiting at the door already dressed. In a suit she had no idea where it’d gotten, but looking professional and work appropriate, so she hadn’t really cared. Traffic had already started piling and there was a meeting with a military contact that she was supposed to sit in on.

She would ask it about the suit at work, when she got a spare second. Except a spare second never came. Except she was in this meeting then in that one. And she was in her office, coordinating another project with too few people and too wide a scope.

“Knox, run this to HR and get it signed please,” she sighed, shoving a tab at it.

“Knox, do you have the minutes from the meeting with Gabel Inc?” as she dug through her files for the right email.

“Knox, can you run a search from Martell’s access? I need his log in,” whispered while on call with another project lead, trying to organize a cross department statement.

She asks and orders and sends her synth scrambling all across the building, hunting down people she hasn’t seen in person since the start of this clusterfuck. She tells it this and has it fetch that, and runs it through more work than she’d ever asked of her human assistants, and it does it all with a smile.

With a “Yes Delia”, an “Of course Delia”, a “On it Delia”. Breezing through the files she flings at it with a ruthless determination, tearing through transcriptions faster than the shitty script software. It even keeps a schedule of all the finicky fucking meetings she’s been jammed into and gives her alerts when the next one’s up.

Sometimes it walks her to wherever it is, sometimes it stays in the office and picks up wherever she left off. It lets her keep working, even when she can’t, and is, in general, the best fucking assistant she’s ever had.

How many hours fly by? Delia doesn’t know. She’s too busy. She doesn’t know the time until Knox says it, doesn’t realise she’s hungry until Knox asks her. And it’s only asking because it went and got her lunch, and wants permission to feed her while she works so she doesn’t lose anything.

Her last assistant used to key her schedule to her phone, and trusted that she’d listen to the alerts from it. The one before that would always suggest she take a break to eat while they handled the reports. Knox doesn’t do that. He offers to help her in a way that’s actually productive, and if she had the time, she’d be touched.

“Yes, please,” she replies, maybe a minute later, maybe fifteen, she doesn’t know and Knox doesn’t point it out. It just lays something in her lap, and brings a chair over to her desk and feeds her something spicy, something sweet, something as delicious as the dinner it’d made last night.

She has no idea if it brought her lunch with them, or if it stopped by the apartment on one of the many errands she’d sent it on, but Delia doesn’t actually care. She enjoys the lunch she barely pays attention to, not even having to turn her head because Knox knows exactly when she’s finished eating, when she needs a second to focus harder, when she forgets it’s there.

Gentle fingers on her jaw remind her though, a tap on her chin to open her mouth, a brush of knuckles on her cheekbone to have her turn ever so slightly. So it can wipe her lips with a napkin, that it got from somewhere, and pack away the remains of the lunch, that goes somewhere else.

Then off again, work again. Delia sends it to shake down a development manager for the progress reports on all their prototype models, and so it goes. At some point the shift changes over and the floor lights die down, going into power saving mode. At some point Knox comes back and feeds her dinner, sitting by her side, pressed along her side.

She doesn’t really keep time after the lights go down, and what’s the point? Nights are when she gets unrestricted access to everything that needs doing, and then some. There’re no meetings at night, no interviews to sit in on, no media corbeaux batting against the windows, hoping for a glimpse of the Board at work.

After hours, when it’s just her on the floor, the only person on ten floors in either direction. She gets a chance to relax. Not much, but enough to lose time.

So what time is it when Knox is leaning in close, warm hands on her tense shoulders? Delia doesn’t know. Late? Or maybe early. Does it matter? No.

“Delia, we should go home,” it says, quiet and calm, gentle enough that its voice doesn’t break her concentration.

She hums, bobs her head, they probably should but they probably won’t, and she expects that to be the end of it. Except no, except Knox starts to dig its thumbs into the tension coiled between her shoulder blades, precise and unyielding, until something pops and she melts. Slumping down, head dropping, eyes fluttering, but still typing, still reading.

The hands, warm and sure, don’t stop. Keep working at the knotted muscles just there and touching her like they have all the right. She should order it to leave, fuck off or whatever, but she doesn’t want it to. Whatever masseuse program it installed is fucking heavenly, feels too good to tell her synth to leave, so she just doesn’t.

Slogging her way through one more report, just to the end of this one, while those warm (so warm) hands work her looser-limper, into a puddle in her chair. While they slide along her neck and settle around it, fingers curled around her throat, brushing the bottom of her jaw. Its grip is lax, non-threatening, but Delia’s seen those hands work, it could pulp her skull in a second.

She should...that should worry her. It doesn’t. Only makes her tip back, look back and up at her synth because it so clearly wants her attention.

“You should rest,” Knox says when she finally acknowledges him. Says it like he’s worried about her, says it with a pinch between his brows and a twist to his frown that makes him look genuinely concerned. And handsome, of course, all synths were, including her oh too human one, but at least hers was approachable beauty.

A crease between his brows, a tilt to his frown, specific microexpressions most non-reception models didn’t get. But there’s more to her Knox too. An imperfect complexion with blemishes and the lightest scattering of freckles against his dark skin. A fall of hair that doesn’t stay perfectly styled, not this late into the night, not after such a long day.

Black curls hang so delicately that Delia can’t help but reach up and push them back, just to touch, just to feel the silk of it. Real under her fingers, nothing to say synthetic, but that’s what he is, right? Even if Romulus Aldrige managed to catch humanity in a bottle, the bottle’s still glass.

But, what a pretty bottle, and Delia’s never wanted to change the world. She doesn’t care about the philosophy of existence or the metaphysical, meta-technical nature of a synth populated world. She cares how real here and now feels, under her hand, around her throat.

“Please,” it mumbles, the barest of squints to those eyes, the most delicate part of lips. How real is this? Delia’d say pretty fucking real.

The way Knox defers to her, listens to her, obeys. The way he’s only cradling her neck right now, instead of lifting her hands off the keyboard and shutting off the terminal. The look in his eyes right now, soft and caring, but caring about her in a way that doesn’t supercede her control.

Delia likes it, oh she likes it very much.

“Please, Priority Alpha,” he breathes so quiet, so barely there. Delia strains to hear it, knows security won’t catch it, because it’s just for her. Only her. 

Priority Alpha. Her designation, something clinical and coded into the base programming, but the way her synth says it. The way his voice dips into it, tongue curling around it, like a title, is so very nice.

“Okay,” she hums, and strokes the jut of a cheekbone, “pack up and we’ll leave.”

She doesn’t fight him on it, to stay back like she always does, to throw back another caffeine shot, shoot up a stim and power through. Delia relaxes into her chair with a sigh, and shuts off her terminal. She hard locks her office and drags her bag out from under the desk, and meets Knox at the door.

Somewhere, between the elevator ride down to ground, and the walk out to the front, he falls into line a half step behind her. Close enough to feel the heat coming off him, but not crowding, protective at her back as they climb into the cab he ordered. He takes the window, and she lets him have it, but leans into him anyway, because he’s warm, and soft, and she’s tired.

They don’t talk, there’s nothing to really say, but it’s a calm quiet. A low level buzz in the back of her brain, a white wash that clears out all the clamouring-clattering worries about military contracts and model rehauls. Knox keeps a hand on her thigh, steady on her thigh, and she lets herself have that. Have him.

There’s probably a conversation she should be having with herself, something about how pathetic and sad it is to get attached to a synth. Even if it does have a face that’s particularly realistic, and micro-expressions, and an emotion learning programme that’s stupid advanced. Getting attached to a synth, treating it like a person, that was what sad, lonely plastics did.

The ones who bought the closest to real models, the ones with faces sure but exposed housings too. The kind who went to puss houses and specifically asked for metal and polymer, desperate for the fake affection, craving that serotonin hit. Synths could love you with all their fake little heart, you could be Priority #1 to them, and some people preferred that.

Was Delia one of them? Not before Knox maybe. Didn’t see the appeal in something that wasn’t hers and couldn’t see the worth of having a synth just for companionship. Not a lot of synths could multi-purpose, and the ones that could certainly weren’t pretty.

But ding ding, guess who just hit payout.

The cab drops them off right in front her building and they’re quiet in the second elevator ride, but not. But the buzz in the back of her brain is charged now, humming in her bones instead. Warm-warm-warm and tingling in a way she hasn’t felt in a while, never for a synth, but fuck it. She bought the damn thing, it’s hers, and she can feel however the hell she wants for it...him.

And every hint of introspection dies dead the second she locks the door behind them. And she doesn’t feel any which way about grabbing his perfectly crisp lapel and dragging him down for a kiss that’s hot and sweet and yielding. Knox, this XZ military model with fangs that prick her tongue, yields to her with a half-muffled moan. Giving in-giving in and melting into her touch; around his neck dragging him down, splayed flat against his chest holding him there.

He doesn’t fight her, doesn’t push her, and she doesn’t even think he wants to. Knox kisses her yes, kisses her like he’s hungry and starving and desperate for one little taste, but he doesn’t force his way. He’ll take whatever she gives. He’s desperate for it. 

Moaning, moaning wet and needy like she’s never heard from a non-escort model. And touching, warm hands on her hips, holding her-holding her there and close and secure. She could break the hold, and she has to, after a little while, a long while?

Delia doesn’t know, lost time, but she has to breathe. Though she wishes she didn’t when Knox whines, so pitched and pained. Wishes she didn’t have to when he chases after her, trailing kisses along her jaw instead, pawing at her hips again, stroking up and under her shirt, bare skin to bare polymer and still so warm.

She breathes, has to breathe, while he kisses his way down her throat, nose pressed against her pulse. And he could rip out her throat, bite with the fangs she tasted, and tear with machine strength. She’d be dead before he finished the rip, dead before she hit the ground.

That should terrify her, scare her, but no. No. She’s seen him with her blood on his lips before, smeared across them, standing so stark red against his tongue. And she’d been disgusted then, but now. Maybe she wants to hear her name whispered like a prayer, coated in her own blood and dripping from her synth’s mouth. Maybe later. Because this is nice right now.

Him shuddering and whimpering against her skin is nice, more than nice. Him reaching up with hands that shake but fingers that don’t, to work open buttons and tug at zippers with mechanical precision is very nice. And she thinks, she expects, him to keep going. Once her shirt’s hanging loose and her skirt’s sagging down, slipping off, showing off skin that’s only a tint darker than his.

But he stops. But he stills, breathing hard, even though he doesn’t need to breathe at all. Chest heaving, even though he doesn’t have lungs to take up the space. Knox stops there and shudders, blinking up at her with eyes blown black, and lips bruised red. So pretty.

She waits, breathing too hard, for him to say something. Do something. He will, won’t he?

“Please,” he huffs, and swallows.

“Please, Priority Alpha,” he keens, nuzzling up under her chin, stroking the length of her ribs.

Please what? Delia doesn’t know, and she doesn’t think he does either, but he’s such a good boy for asking. No, not asking, begging. Begging like this was all he was made for.

To please her. Pleasure her. Just her, only her. His Priority Alpha. Begging so desperately-desperately like he’ll never get the chance again. Never again.

What does he want? She doesn’t know, but what he wants isn’t the priority here, is it?

His petting hands are so easy to move, he’s so easy to push around. To pull away from the door and spin around, until it’s to her back and he’s on his knees for her. Dropping with barely a touch, not a pound of pressure.

He looks so good there, kneeling between her legs, staring up at her with glassy eyes and panting mouth. So pretty and perfect, good boy. Such a good boy, dragging her skirt and underwear down her hips without being told, shuffling close-closer to her. Until she can feel the hot huff of his artificial breath against her bare thighs.

He’d stay there forever if she let him. With a hand on her hip, one on her thigh, touching and stroking but not taking. He’ll only take what she gives, even if he wants-wants-wants. Good boy.

“Go ahead, Knox,” she hums, reaching down to thread her fingers through that smooth silk hair, nudging him closer, “it’s alright.”

And a second, a stuttering-shuttering second where she thinks she got it wrong, that no he doesn’t. Where his mouth drops and his throat bobs, caught in the headlights. Then the second breaks, it’s stomped under a heel and ground into dust as he falls forward.

Kissing at her thighs, easing them apart with immaculate machine strength and fitting himself into the space. Giving himself room to work with sweet little nips and firm kitten licks and barely there drags of fang that catch in her throat and tremble in her chest.

“Apologies, Priority Alpha, my technicians failed to equip me with pleasure protocols,” Knox groans, against her thigh, between her legs. Kissing-kissing, with teeth and tongue so perfect.

“But you downloaded escort programmes,” she sighs, finishing the statement that was never a question. Of course he did and of course he would. She doesn’t ask because she already knows and that makes it so easy to relax into his touch. Strong, without a stutter, holding her up, without any effort.

He doesn’t rush, doesn’t push for more-more-more now-now-now, but he doesn’t let down.

He doesn’t rock back and pant against her hip, red faced and breathless when she starts a rhythm against his face. Something slow, for now, something barely there, to drag his pretty mouth closer to where she wants it, where she’s already wet and waiting. No, no, he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t need to. He keeps kissing, doesn’t stop nipping, and leaves his mark on her skin. Dark red and stinging, dark red and lasting. And the pain is delicious. Sharp-sharp, oh fuck yes, but it could be sharper.

He could bite through her skin, rip into the meat of her thigh and break her bones. Easy as blinking, easy as fluttering those warm eyes and looking up at her. Knox isn’t a man, he isn’t even an escort bot, he’s military made and modelled. He was built to flip tanks and crash barricades; him and his entire scrapped line. But, instead, he’s on his knees for her, his Priority Alpha.

“Knox,” she murmurs, using that barely there grip to drag him away, so easy away. Yanks him back until she can see his blown wide eyes and slack jawed pant and his tongue lap-lap-lapping at his spit slick lips.

He’s so gorgeous, beautiful, and he’s panting now. Loud enough to hear, but his shoulders aren’t lifting with the motion, his chest doesn’t rise. He’s taking air straight to his cooling system, stopping himself from overheating…from just this? Just being on his knees for her? That shouldn’t—he was built far more efficiently than that but…

…but he wasn’t built specifically for sex, or a single user. Mission priority would always override administrator access; the specific pleasure-success feedback loop that’d taken years to develop had made sure of that. Romulus had made sure of that.

He’d coded them, these new XZs, to be fully dedicated to their mission because mission: success was the only thing that would provide them with pleasure. Not praise from a commanding officer, not hard order codes from a technician, only mission: success. But Knox hadn’t been given mission orders, he hadn’t even been given an administrator. He had a Priority Alpha.

She was his mission.

“Priority Alpha?” he breathes, with breath he doesn’t need…except, except he does need it, doesn’t he? To stop from overheating, because he’s getting off on this. On making her wet, on making her feel good.

“Scan request: Priority Alpha,” she whispers, low and sweet but an order, still an order. The first official one she’s given him and the first he’s ever got.

And his eyes do not glaze, no worse than they already are. And his breathing doesn’t stop, as unnecessarily-necessary as it is. And he doesn’t freeze, stop, or stutter, as he scans her. There’s nothing to tell he even is scanning.

Except that his pupils dilate, entirely black and entirely blown. Except that a delicate shiver tears down his spine and shudders against her hand, where she’s holding him still.

“Vitals within optimum ranges for age, sex, and ethnicity. Heart rate 134bpm, elevated. Respiration increased. Brain function remapped; decreased activity from logic centres, increased activity from sensory cortex. Increase in dopamine, oxytocin, and noradrenaline production,” he rattles off between gasps and sighs and desperately licked lips.

He talks, and talks, but she doesn’t really listen, not to the words. She listens to his voice instead, the rasping timbre and the underlying strain to it. She watches him, his fluttering lashes and nearly imperceptible squirming. In a human, it would be the shiver-shake of their panting, in her synth though, in her synth it’s something else.

What else?

“And what does all of that mean?” she asks, letting go of his hair to cup his cheek, to stroke those slick lips. And feel that tongue again, perfectly wet and perfectly hot against her finger, dragging along the skin and coaxing—begging for more.

“That you’re aroused,” she waits for him to groan, then gives him his more.

Slipping her thumb into his mouth, to hold his tongue down, jaw open. His teeth rest gentle against her finger, his tongue wet underneath, and he stares with sweet doe eyes. He could bite down, so easy and smooth, he could maul her right here and now, but he won’t.

Priority Alpha has him by the throat, and he loves it. Because he was designed to love it. Because Synthetech spent billions developing a robot with a pleasure response to being a good boy.

“Because of you, Knox, did you know that? All that because of you,” she drawls, and smiles at his hitching little whine. Guttural and low, yes, but desperate too, so-so desperate.

“I have another order for you,” she says, casually, as though she’s not desperate too. As though she has enough patience to wait the night away; with him on his knees for her, up against the wall over him. He would wait for whatever she chose to give him, and if she didn’t give him anything, he’d be grateful for that too.

He tries to respond, to accept the request, whatever it is but he remembers before his tongue can twitch against her finger. Catches himself with a moan, and hums a wordless, thoughtless reply instead.

“Mission Set: Bring Priority Alpha to orgasm,” she barely says, before he’s snapping to military attention. Eyes focusing, nostrils flaring.

And she sees, for the first time, what he should’ve been. Determination with no outside distractions, cold and sharp and so distinctly inhuman that it should be terrifying. She should be scringing away from him, should have her heart in her throat and be thinking about escape, get away, danger.

But she doesn’t. She can’t. Knox, XZ 9832, processes his very first order, with the surreal humanity Synthetech was so praised for, and Delia watches with her breath caught and her cunt throbbing. Waiting-waiting.

Then she’s gasping, and she’s moving, and his mouth is on her again. Tongue licking into her, shoulders under her thighs, hands holding her up, holding her open. She chokes on that caught breath, gasps so ragged and painful-sharp, but god it’s good. Fuck it’s good.

“Knox,” she gasps-growls, rough in her throat.

She grabs at him, scrabbles at the wall, snatching for something to hold her steady, though he’s doing a perfect fucking job. But it’s too much, it’s too good, she feels like she’s melting out of her skin and into him, the feeling of him, everything him.

He’s licking into her with dogged determination, lapping and sucking and sounding so fucking obscene. Wet, so fucking wet, and slick, and he hums happily over the sound of it, responding to her breathless gasp of his name.

“No teasing,” she moans, head thunking back against the wall, teeth grit on the pleasure of it. She feels warm, so warm, and floating away, but there’s just one piece of tension that’s winding tighter and higher. With every lap of his tongue along her slit, every sucking kiss at her clit.

He obeys, because he can’t do anything else, and lets go of her hip. One hand holding her up, one ghosting along the line of her thigh. Her legs are already spread so wide, resting on his shoulders, but he manages just the barest bit more and settles himself flush against her. Until she can’t see the deep brown of his eyes, only the curl of his hair through her slitted eyes.

Then she doesn’t see a single thing as his fingers slip and crook and slide right into her cunt and stroke just perfect. Rubbing-stroking-fucking her. Shit. She. She gets a fistful of his hair and pulls. Not enough to hurt him, nothing could hurt him, but he groans.

Tongue buzzing against her, inside of her, and she snarls. Bucks against his pretty face, and does it again. Until he’s whining against her cunt, fucking into her with a rhythm that’s missing its notes, but she doesn’t care. This is enough, more than enough.

The heady high of it is perfect.

And when he drags his tongue, and when he groans some garbled word, and when he curls his fingers just like that. Delia bares her teeth and drags his hair and cums. Just like that, just for him. Choked off and breathless, cut off and growling.

On his fingers, shaking against his mouth. On his shoulders, riding his face.

Knox leads her through it, relentless and untiring. Doesn’t stop lapping at her slick, or fucking her so lazy-gentle with his clever fingers; he doesn’t need to breathe but he huffs against her. He’s not coded for it but he moans, against her, around her, electricity straightening her arched spine.

And she does mean electricity. A low-voltage buzz that makes her bones ache and her muscles melt and short circuits her brain. It’s t-too much, too good. Fuck. Fuck.

She needs—she can’t. She finds the crook of her elbow, bites down into it, hard-so hard. Bites and bleeds hot on her tongue, sparks down her spine. Shit. Fuck.

She breathes. It’s all she can do. Breathe hard through her nose as Knox keeps her warm. And loose and wet and wanting, just the way she utterly adores, all while she’s still up against the door.

He only relents when she lets go, hand slipping out of his hair to push against his face. Push him away, but not too far.

Then there’s just the buzz, just the tingle of the high. The hop-drop back down to ground, except it’s not a plummet so much as a float. Easing back down-down, while he smiles up at her with a slack smile. While he laps at the bruises he left, the bites he made.

“You should eat, I made dinner,” he mumbles, between sloppy kisses too, her thighs, the soft skin behind her knee. In the cool of the room, every wet kiss shudders up her spine and chatters her teeth, and it’s good, so good. A little bit of cool to calm the boiling-jolting in her blood.

“That’s nice Knox,” she slurs, as he kisses the ticklish spot just below her hip. He does it, and does it, and does it again, until she’s giggling breathless above him, squirming against his face again.

“Would you like me to feed you again?” he asks, and she feels that sharper grin before she sees it. Half against her leg, half tilted up at her. Still between her legs, still red and ruddy, but so warm and real and genuine. The same smile he’s given her from the start.

Delia sighs, floating in the afterglow, and pets his cheek, which he leans into of course. What a good boy. What a fucking treasure.

“Yes, in bed,” she tells him, and laughs again. Breathless surprise, when he just stands up. From kneeling to standing without a complaint, without a stutter. He takes her off of his shoulders of course, because her head’s nearly brushing the ceiling up there, but he doesn’t let her go far.

Rearranges her onto his hip instead, holding her secure with an arm under her ass and cheek rubbing against hers. Like a cat scenting her almost.

“Of course, Priority Alpha,” he says, and carries her to bed without a stick or stutter in his step.

“Good boy,” she coos, petting his hair, leaning up to kiss his jaw, “Such a good boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> So say hello to my newest OCs that're part of a much wider cyberpunk universe. Some of the things I mention here, like morphs and cys, get explained in different parts of the universe. But basically, some humans have animal traits that they got after a demon mated into their bloodline somewhere down the line. Yes the demons are hot, Yes I will write them eventually too :3 
> 
> As always, find me [@MMaximilla](https://twitter.com/MMaximilla) if you wanna chat about my OCs or see more horny from me. Thanks for reading and have a good one y'all.


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